PACQUIAO READY TO FIGHT MAYWEATHER END OF MAY SO THEY COULD MAKE AN ADDITIONAL $40M

By Ronnie NathanielszPhilBoxing.comWed, 11 Jan 2012

Ring Magazine pound for pound king Manny Pacquiao isn’t prepared to stoop down to the level of Floyd Mayweather Jr who challenged Pacquiao to face him on May 5 telling him via his twitter account “Pacquiao I’m calling you out. Let’s fight May 5 and give the world what they want to see. My jail sentence was pushed back because the date was locked in. Step up punk.”

Pacquiao and his adviser Michael Koncz said the “Fighter of the Decade” will gladly fight Mayweather at the end of May emphasizing “We are not ducking the fight. From a business perspective we are not going to throw away an additional $30-$40 million. Be a man (Floyd) and step up to the plate. Fight at the end of May and the fight is done.”

Top Rank promoter Bob Arum told the Manila Standard that Mayweather is posturing. Arum claimed “They have already agreed to fight Robert Guerrero on May 5. They feel that if they blame Manny and myself for the Pacquiao-Mayweather not happening and therefore they are fighting Guerrero and that somehow the public will excuse them and buy the Mayweather-Guerrero fight. That is stupid. Nobody is going to buy the fight unless they believe it's a good fight. The fact that I did this or Manny did that is not going to make a guy buy or not buy a Mayweather-Guerrero fight.”

He claimed that what they are doing “makes absolutely no sense. They should spend their bullets somehow making a case as to why Guerrero is a dangerous fighter.”

Arum said “the one thing we are not going to do is to respond to the nonsense.”

The astute promoter said Pacquiao’s statement that he is ready to face Mayweather at the end of May because of the financial considerations is absolutely correct even as he insisted “they have no intention of fighting Manny before he goes to prison.”

He said “they want to grab some quick bucks fighting a non-dangerous opponent, go to jail if Mayweather has to, come out and then go right into a big fight with Manny Pacquiao. They know we got to have time to build that outdoor stadium because that can bring to the bottom line an additional $30-$40 million. That becomes a big percentage of the total estimated gross.”